US Government Spending as Proportion of Gross Domestic Product56
The most common view of the state, among Marxists and non-Marxists alike, has been to see it as something external to the capitalist economic system. This approach has long been accepted by the mainstream "Realist" school in the academic discipline of international relations. It sees states as self-contained entities clashing internationally according to a logic which has nothing to do with the economic form of organisation existing within them.57 A somewhat similar approach is to be found in some Marxist writings.
Capitalism, in this view, consists of the pursuit of profits by firms (or, more accurately speaking, the self-expansion of capitals) without regard to where they are based geographically. The state, by contrast, is a geographically based political entity, whose boundaries cut across the operations of individual capitals. The state may be a structure that developed historically to provide the political prerequisites for capitalist production-to protect capitalist property, to police the dealings of different members of the ruling class with each other, to provide certain services which are essential for the reproduction of the system, and to carry through such reforms as are necessary to make other sections of society accept capitalist rule-but it is not to be identified with the capitals that operate within it.
Beyond Marx: Monopoly, War and the State
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